Oh. Okay.
Run. Run home. Just don't stop running.
You recall your college days as you tuck the module under your arm and sprint for the nearest hole in the apartment wall.
[Cannonball Run: 5]
Fortunately there's no shortage of holes to take advantage of - diving straight out of one, you tumble out onto the smashed ruins of the tenement, and briefly consult your sense of depth by looking up for the ceiling - looks like you've sunk into the ground. So you sprint up the remains of some stairs - a demon dives out of some rubble and smacks into your shield like an impenetrable glass pane, crawling off deeply shamed as you peel out of the building by diving through what used to be a third story window but now appears to have come to terms with being at ground level - sliding out onto the street, you look outward - a few demons here and there, none of them at all likely to bother you, and off in the distance there's the security cordon. You take a deep breath and resume sprinting wildly toward them, and briefly slow down when you spot a snake demon chasing what is very obviously some kind of vampire necromancer along the street toward the barricades.
As you very kindly let them go first while still keeping your hands on the module (damn thing sure is heavy though, sure wish you could strap it on like a backpack, but oh well), you see the snake get shot through the head by the helpful guards out front with the help of what looks to be a stationary railgun - there's precious little left of the top of the thing's skull, that's for certain. There's also an explosion up top - you see something that must have got hit by sniper fire, which seems weird because she also still looks to be in one piece, which is not at all consistent with what you know about things hit by the kind of snipers Commercial security employ for heavy-duty work.
[Goon Speech: 1+1]
The vampire stops for a second, then resumes his approach at a slightly more sedate pace as he tries to decipher what the guards are saying to each other, but seemingly to little effect. A few of the guards look to you as well, their fingers going to their helmets as they find an appropriate vision mode to appreciate the beauty of a fine vehicle-grade energy shield, comparing its energy signatures thoughtfully with the phase on their own laser weapons.
If you're timing this right, and you know you are, you've got eight minutes of juice left in your shield module. Which is good, because you don't need to be a genius to figure out things are only gonna get dicier from here.
Cast Fortify Undead on Enir so that she won't be insta-gibbed by sniper fire that hits her (just maybe horribly wounded or something).
Then head towards the police encampment (preferably with Enir, if possible) while looking as innocent as possible (which probably means dismissing my Protection from Holy Weapons spell.
[Darkness In The Bones: 4+1]
You look at the shape of Enir up above and figure you ought to give her at least one more helpful enchantment - you've got a ton of these damn things in your spellbooks and you hardly ever find a vampire you've failed to hate sufficiently to use this on. A streak of invisible animating force launches from your fingertips and you see Enir suddenly loom larger in the sky, not because of growing in any physical sense but rather because the light itself appears to shun her, her shadow and her self becoming momentarily and horrifically one...
... damn you're good. Now to dodge right out of Hell as quickly as possible and not get blown up by the next salvo! Now the important thing here is to look innocent, you think. What would be the best way to do that?
[Wounded Vampire Gambit: 6]
You look at one of the demons crawling serpentine out of the rubble, slightly twisted but otherwise seemingly in good spirits. You point at it and screech in the abyssal three-tongued way - you, yeah, you! Your mother loves you very much!
The demon looks up at you, breathing steam through its mouth as its snake head hisses, six scorpion claws protruding from its back starting to clack one by one. He would like to inform you that, despite widespread cultural misconceptions, demons do not actually think that evil is good, they merely find that destroying things they don't understand is generally easier than studying them. Besides, the demon says, he hatched from an egg. He doesn't even know
what his mother is, they could be like a three-headed bull or, really, anything as far as he knows. He just broke out of a shell and then mercilessly ate the rest of the weaker and softer hatchlings to become the chosen of his clutch. Then he got large enough to come to parties like this one and, well, that's about where he got all the education he's had or needed in life.
Okay, you say. Since you're being level with each other, does he feel like chasing after you and vomiting death every which way for dramatic effect while you try and dodge him and escape to safety?
You know, you could have just asked for that right away, the snake demon shakes his head, getting a good chemosensory bead on you. He loves chasing dudes around ruins! Here, he'll even give you a two second head start.
You nod thankfully and start sprinting along the street, screaming wildly as in two seconds exactly the snake demon hisses about how he's not had a fun chase in years and tears after you, his wings unfolding like leathery tesseracts as he follows eel-like after you, covering many a spot you were just in with caustic and likely horrendously diseased snot, the beast's eyes filling with rising naked bloodlust as well as mild fascination at several ex-landmarks you pass along the way as you run toward the barricade, arms flapping in the air. You see black visors with a faint blue gleam to them, heavily armored Commercial security leveling weapons at the best behind you.
This is so much fun, you hear the beast roar right before one of them levels a gun emplacement at him and puts three half-pound slugs through his skull, chunks of fiendish brain flying backward as the snake slumps to the ground, wings deflating and a faint line of sticky, lethal drool running out of its happily smiling demon mouth. You hear the tinny, near-unintelligible sound of two officer-looking security guys arguing about something while indicating you.
[Goon Speech: 2]
You feel exposed right now as you cautiously start walking to the barricade. Several security goons are eying you. Some appear to be laughing. Nobody seems to have a blanket handy for a poor refugee from a disaster area, that's for sure. The cordon doesn't look like it's parting either.
Noticing some of them looking very much behind you, you look as well and spot a dwarf, middle-aged and seemingly unremarkable, real accountant type if you've ever seen one, jogging in your direction with an incredibly thoughtful expression, accompanied only by some kind of box in his hands and an overpowering smell of ozone.
CRAWL, CRAWL, CRAWL
[Tunneler's Delight: 6+1]
Suddenly reminded for the one thousandth time today about all the shit (metaphorical, you've built up an immunity to the actual stuff from living here) that can kill you around these parts, you scurry for your life into the dank depths of Hell's lovely sewer. For instance, this particular sewage solution is a lot older than most - you're not far from the original descent into Hell (now long decommissioned for safety and expense reasons) and, for that matter, the Hotel d'Hell. And if there's one thing about the Hotel d'Hell that you love, it's the way the sewers become incredibly byzantine around there, a relic from an incredibly troubled original construction coupled with inconsistent building standards and, naturally, considerable demonic interference. It's like an onion of bad decisions, with nine separate unfinished or abandoned iterations of hotel built on one of Hell's less favorable plateaus, overlapping and intertwining with each other to create what would surely be a horrid deathtrap to anyone not familiar with its workings or at the very least accustomed to working in a goblin-run mine.
On account of its dereliction the place has become something of a cesspool, a drain that the nearby sewage systems gleefully dump everything into on account of it going much deeper and much greedier than any successor installation, in a time before they figured out how to make their plumbing non-toxic and before you could synthesize booze just about anywhere with a push of a button. You've familiarized yourself pretty well with the tunnels around here whenever you need to lay low, so you've got several hiding spots off the top of your head already, so you head to the first - the boiler (which used to double as a colossal still in a bygone age of dwarven ingenuity) on the seventh hotel layer, right above the charming bed & breakfast near the core (which in turn is above the old military barracks) but beneath the elaborate murder dungeon disguised as a mere hell hotel.
As you draw near the cistern, however, you sense several curious things. Firstly, there's light coming out of the hole that you usually used to get in there. Secondly, the light is accompanied by some seriously terrible music. Puzzled yet cautious, you draw closer to the hole and briefly peek into it.
Within you see... hey, it's the dwarf from the bar. The one who was on the stage. You were a bit too drunk then to remember his name, but he doesn't necessarily strike you as a person to shoot a fellow sewer refugee in the face if approached in a friendly enough manner. Then again that's not really something you get to be wrong about twice in your life, is it?
Ah.
That's a much more interesting position.
"HEY JAL IF YOU CAN HEAR ME I'M GONNA GO SEE IF I CAN FENCE ALL THIS SHIT I STOLE OFF BROKESHIN. MEET ME AT THE MARKETS! IF YOU CANT HEAR ME, SORRY!"
Glide on the wind, seeking to land beyond the police barricades (but close to them) and near a marketplace where I could find a construction crew and a good fence.
[Over The Cops And Far Away: 2]
You feel dark power surge into you as Jal gives you one last heads-up before the two of you split for now. You know, it's pretty cool having a dwarf around who can shoot pure dark magic into you to give you even more superpowers now and again, you think as you glide toward the barricade. Like this thing you just got hit with - feels like being a vampire, but somehow more so, like if you drank the soul of a billionaire or something (you know a dwarf who did that once, she hasn't shut up about the power high she got for three decades at this point). The strange feeling of perfection puts you in a reflective mood, gliding away on the drafts of the fires and explosions in your cape, weird boots with roller skates tied onto them, underwear and mask, missing only some spandex for the complete look.
... until you are hit in the side with a smart slug, of course, which feels strangely like a rubber bullet (those you have more experience with than smart slugs, the benchmark for which is putting down a bronze colossus from a mile away) as it explodes against your flesh and seemingly washes over you. You lose your composure for a moment as your arms flail and you disrupt your aerodynamic stability, starting to plummet perhaps about a block away from the barricade.
Of course, when there's one sniper round at play, there usually tend to be others, and that's the way it is here - a full salvo hits you next after that first testing shot, the smart ammo unerringly managing to strike you from everywhere at once. There is a sudden and terrible sense of pressure as Jal's enchantment is strained to the limit, and then with an explosion of dark power it ablates off you, leaving just regular old you, slightly charred and in a tailspin about eighty feet above the police cordon and about to hit the ground, which in the near vicinity is populated noticeably by a veritable legion of Commercial security, including several artillery detachments and, now that you think about it, probably a wizard as well.
You also think you see Jal in your peripheral vision somewhere, but it's hard to tell with the spinning, unlike with the security forces which, indeed, it'd take a lot more than mere angular momentum to miss with how goddamn many there seem to be out here.
Jalormis, Extremely Undead Guy
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Money: 2
Old Yeller: A Horrific Debt
Evil Minion: the Honorary Zombie
The Abyssal Players: Escaped Instrument
Too Close: 4
Enir Nazush, Barmaid of the Night
Alternatively Souled: Vampire
Weapon of Choice: Fire Axe
A Pair of Beat-Up Roller Skates (worn)
Outfit: Post-Nuclear Stripper Getup
Personal Therapy Assistant: Overjoyed
Green-Eyed Lady: Worthy Foe
Old Yeller: Left To One's Devices
Break Yo Shins: Down Payment
Loot: Concert Night's Earnings From Death's Gate
Good Luck Flashbang
Fresh Lipstick
All-Purpose Cleaning Solution
Plastic Raincoat
Nice Comb
Too Close: 2
Money: Flat Broke
Ancient Words of Protection: Unholy Ward
Urist mac Slughterfiend, Miner on the Edge
Money: Flat Broke
Gruesome Insolvency: Surreal Debts
Eyes of the Butterfly: Foiled!
Green-Eyed Lady: The Hunt Is On
Too Close: 4
Ancient Words of Protection: Unholy Ward
Cazin Crundle-Smasher, Uncanny Bookkeeper
Money: Nominal
Old Yeller: Hopefully Dead
Too Close: 2
Closed-Circuit: Crashing At The Pad
The Threadspinners: Indicated
Spy-Grade Vehicle-Sized Shield Module (active, 8 minutes of juice left!)
Author
Topic: Cyberdwarf: Concession and Cancellation in a Far-Future Fortress (Read 15118 times)